Timothy Oliver Stoen (born January 16, 1938), is best known for his central role as a member of the Peoples Temple, and as an opponent to the group during a multi-year custody battle over his six-year-old son, John. Stoen's battle led to an investigation of the Peoples Temple's settlement at Jonestown, Guyana, which became internationally notorious in 1978 after 918 people—including Stoen's son—died in the settlement and on a nearby airstrip. Stoen continues to work as a deputy district attorney in Mendocino County, California, where he is assigned to the District Attorney's Fort Bragg office.

Stoen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.,[1] the child of religious middle-class parents from Littleton, Colorado.[2] Throughout high school and college he was a scholar, athlete and devout Christian.[2] He graduated from Wheaton College with a B.A. in Political Science.[1]

In 1967, Stoen left the district attorney's office with the intention of doing work for flower children in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district,[2] and also worked as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County.[2] Though he represented black militants and supported an ecological platform, he briefly considered running for office as a Republican.[2]

In 1970, Stoen married Grace Lucy Grech, whom he had met at march at the San Francisco Civic Center against overpopulation and pollution.[5] Their son, John Victor Stoen, was born on January 25, 1972.[6]

Stoen first encountered the Peoples Temple[when?] when it was suggested that he ask the group to help renovate the Mendocino County legal aid offices.[2] Two dozen Temple volunteers showed up the following Sunday, and Stoen began sending people to the Temple for drug and marriage counseling.[2][7]

Stoen became impressed with Temple leader Jim Jones' character and good deeds, especially when he saw Jones scrubbing toilets in the Temple building himself.[2] Stoen also was impressed that Jones and his wife were the first Caucasian couple to adopt a black child in Indiana.[7][8] Stoen and Jones became personal friends and Stoen drove to Redwood Valley to attend Temple services.[9] By the end of 1969, when violence erupted in Berkeley over People's Park and Third World students' rights, Stoen began to integrate his personal life with the Temple.[9]

In 1970, Stoen moved to the Temple's headquarters in Ukiah, where he worked as a deputy district attorney and head of Mendocino County's civil division.[4][10] Stoen began providing legal aid for the Temple and politically converted to the Temple's socialism vision.[11]

Ironically, Temple members later alleged that the Temple arranged for "busloads" of members to be bused from Redwood Valley to San Francisco to vote in these election under threats of physical violence.[15] When asked how Jones could know for whom they voted, one member responded "You don't understand, we wanted to do what he told us to."[15] Stoen later claimed that he was not aware at the time of voter fraud, despite being in charge of the city's election fraud special unit, but that it could have happened without his knowledge because "Jim Jones kept a lot of things from me."[15]

On February 6, 1972, just two weeks after his son John was born, Stoen signed an affidavit in which he stated that John's father was Reverend Jim Jones.[16] The single-page document eventually became the most important piece of paper in the Temple’s history. Stoen's affidavit not only seemed to contradict his putative paternity, but also “bound the child to Jones and the church for life.”[13] In the years to follow, Jones would cite the affidavit countless times to demonstrate his paternity of the child, to denigrate Grace’s worthiness to be a mother, and to dismiss Stoen’s claims of custody rights.[16]

Stoen's wife Grace, meanwhile, had grown to greatly dislike the Temple. She had given up her son John to have him raised communally, based on her husband's affidavit. She had also been berated in Planning Commission meetings for denying that Jim Jones was John's father, watched John be paddled in Temple proceedings, listened to Jones portray her husband Tim as a homosexual, had Jones wave a gun at her in Planning Commission meeting threatening to shoot her if she fell asleep, and witnessed the beating of a 40-year-old woman who had claimed the Temple turned members into robots.[17] Grace and Temple member Walter Jones, known as Smitty, agreed to leave together.[18] In July 1976, Grace and Smitty fled to Lake Tahoe.[18]

Grace was unable to take her young son with her; John was thousands of miles away in Guyana, and she did not want to put John’s life in jeopardy along with hers.[16] Nevertheless, she began to fight for custody almost immediately after her defection. In February 1977, Grace threatened to legally divorce Tim.[19] Fearing that possible legal action against Stoen would make the custody dispute public, Jones sent him to Jonestown.[19] Stoen quit his job as assistant district attorney and began working in Guyana, both at Jonestown and at the Temple's headquarters in Georgetown.[20] However, distrusting Temple members were secretly spying on Stoen and examining the contents of his briefcase.[21] Within a year, Stoen also left the church, returned to San Francisco, and joined Grace's custody battle. When Stoen defected, he became Jones' chief antagonist, and Jones encouraged his Jonestown residents to write detailed, humiliating fantasies about killing Stoen.[16]

In one sense, John "represented the most visible symbol in the battle between Jim Jones and the Concerned Relatives organization."[16] If Jones were forced to surrender John, he would have lost his claims of absolute power of protection for his followers.

In July 1977, Jones moved several hundred Temple members to Jonestown to escape building pressure from media investigations.[22] That same night, an editor at New West magazine read Jones a pending article, written by Marshall Kilduff, detailing allegations by former Temple members.[22][23] Most politicians had broken ties with Jones by that point,[24] although some local politicians, including Willie Brown, Harvey Milk and Art Agnos, were still supporting him.[25]

In September 1977, a Georgetown court ordered the Temple to show cause why a final order should not be issued compelling the return of John to his mother.[26] A few days later, the same court issued a second order for Jones' arrest.[27]

In fear of being held in contempt of the court orders, and in an attempt to further manipulate his followers, Jones staged a false sniper attack on himself and began a series of "White Night" rallies, called the "Six Day Siege", where Jones told Temple members about attacks from outsiders and had members surround Jonestown with guns and machetes.[28]Angela Davis and Huey Newton communicated via radio-telephone to the Jonestown crowd, urging them to hold strong against the "conspiracy."[29] Jones made radio broadcasts stating "we will die unless we are granted freedom from harassment and asylum."[30] Deputy Minister Ptolemy Reid finally assured Jones' wife Marceline that Guyanese Defense Forces would not invade Jonestown.[31] The Guyana clerk refused to sign an arrest warrant for Jones, and there was talk of government interference in the legal process.[32]

After this initial round of the Stoen custody dispute, Jones directed Temple members to write over a dozen foreign governments inquiring about their immigration policies, in the event that they had to flee Guyana.[33] He also wrote the U.S. State department, inquiring about North Korea and Stalinist Albania.[33]

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the Stoens and other relatives of Jonestown members began attending meetings at the home of Jeannie Mills.[34] The group began calling themselves the "Concerned Relatives."[34] They shared details of their encounters with the Temple, interviewed Temple defectors, and reviewed short wave radio transcripts of communications between Jonestown and the Temple's San Francisco headquarters.[34] Temple surveillance teams, aware of these meetings, checked license plates in front of Mills' house to determine the identity of their "enemies." [34] Stoen's addition to the group was vital because of his knowledge of Temple operations, his letter-writing campaigns to the Secretary of State and the government of Guyana, and his travels to Washington to spearhead an investigation.[7] Stoen became the Concerned Relatives' primary legal representative, and filed four court actions against the Temple and its leadership on November 18, 1978 on the group's behalf.[16]

Congressman Leo Ryan

Finally, after pressing for legal action in the United States, in November 1977, an order was issued in a San Francisco court granting custody of John to his mother, Grace.[35] The court order meant that Jones could not return to the United States without facing contempt proceedings for failing to turn over the child; it also meant John could never leave Jonestown.[16]

In January 1978, Stoen traveled to Georgetown to take custody of the child, but he was unsuccessful.[36] The Guyanese judge recused himself from the case because his life had been threatened, and a new judge had to restart the process from the beginning.[32] A Guyanese official approached Stoen and told him to leave immediately, one week before his visa expired.[37] While at the airport, three Temple members surrounded Stoen and threatened his life unless he dropped his legal action.[37] Although Stoen wanted to travel to Jonestown to retrieve John, he thought "if I went back, I thought I would probably be a corpse within 30 days."[7]

After Stoen returned to Washington D.C. from Georgetown in January 1978, he visited with nine congressmen, including Leo Ryan.[38] The Temple, likewise, sent members to visit eight of the nine Congressman in order to discredit Stoen.[38]

Stoen also wrote a "white paper" to Congress that stated how Jim Jones was illegally holding his son.[39] The white paper claimed that any action by the Guyanese Army to retrieve the child could result in harm to John or others, and insisted that members of Congress write Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham to take action.[39] Congressman Leo Ryan's interest was aroused by the Stoen custody fight and he wrote such a letter on Stoen's behalf.[40] Several Congressmen also wrote Burnham about Stoen's concerns.[39]

At the end of January 1978, Stoen and fellow Concerned Relative Steven Katsaris met with State Department officials.[39] Stoen insisted that Jones' mental condition was deteriorating and that he was suffering from "paranoid megalomania."[39] He urged that the State Department move Guyana to "speedily enforce" the custody orders that the Stoens had won.[39]

Feeling the international pressure, on February 17, 1978, Jones submitted to an interview with San Francisco Examiner journalist Tim Reiterman over a radio-telephone.[41] Reiterman's story about the Stoens' custody battle appeared in the Examiner's February 18 preview edition of that Sunday's paper.[42]

The article undermined Jones' credibility[42] as well as the Temple's reputation, and made most former supporters more suspicious of the Temple's claim that it was being subjected to a "rightist vendetta."[42] Temple attorneys immediately sent a letter to the Examiner, stating "this is the straw that broke the camel's back" and "we . . will litigate."[42] The Temple also sent the February 6, 1972 affidavit that Stoen had signed, claiming that Jim Jones was his son's real father,[43] which Herb Caen reprinted in his San Francisco Chronicle column.[43]

The next day, February 19, 1978, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter supporting Jones.[44][45][46][47] The Temple had assisted Milk's 1976 election race to become a California State assembly member,[48] and Milk had visited and spoken at Temple rallies.[25][49] In the letter to President Carter, Milk wrote "Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities and elsewhere as a man of the highest character...[44] Timothy and Grace Stoen [are] the parties attempting to damage Rev. Jones reputation". Milk also wrote "[i]t is outrageous that Timothy Stoen could even think of flaunting this situation in front of Congressman with apparent bold-faced lies."[44] The letter insisted that "the actions of Mr. Stoen need to be brought to a halt. It is offensive to most in the San Francisco community and all those who know Rev. Jones to see this kind of outrage taking place." [44]

On March 14, 1978, Temple member Pam Moten sent an open letter to Congress, suggesting that members of the Concerned Relatives group were conspiring with the FCC and IRS against the Temple.[50] It stated "radical Trotskyite elements which defected from our organization when we refused to follow their violent course have been orchestrating a campaign against us." [50] Moten's letter suggested that Soviet overtures to assist the Temple might embarrass the U.S.: "[i]n fact, several overtures have been made from Russia, which sees our current harassment as a form of political persecution. We do not want to take assistance from any people nor do we want to become an international issue."[50]

On April 11, 1978, the Concerned Relatives distributed a packet of documents, including letters and affidavits that they titled an "Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones" to the Peoples Temple, members of the press and members of Congress.[51] The accusations chronicled mistreatment in Jonestown, which it portrayed as an armed camp, and described hard labor, passport confiscation and statements about Jones' speeches speaking of suicide and conspiracies against the Temple.[51]

On May 10, 1978, the Peoples Temple retorted with their own "Open Statement" alleging the Concerned Relatives were part of a massive conspiracy and attacking the "so called Free Enterprise system" and "racist" "corporate power." [52] It portrayed the Concerned Relatives as just the "latest ploy" of a larger conspiracy that was "growing desperate" and had a "total inability to understand the dynamics of a collective unit."[52] It further portrayed the group as lying and attempting to "destroy us."[52]

In June 1978, Deborah Layton and her attorney drafted a further affidavit detailing alleged crimes by the Peoples Temple and substandard living conditions in Jonestown.[53][54]

Jonestown radio tower

Stoen and other Concerned Relative members had monitored Temple shortwave radio broadcasts, and Stoen filed complaints with the FCC in the Fall of 1977 for Temple regulation violations.[55] In later affidavits and lawsuits filed in 1978, Stoen cited communications the group had intercepted through their monitoring.[55] Stoen also acted as the lawyer in three different lawsuits filed in May and June 1978 on behalf of members of the Concerned Relatives against Jones and other Temple members collectively seeking over $56 million in damages.[56]

On July 10, 1978, the Temple sued Stoen for $150 million, charging that Stoen violated his attorney-client relationship with the Temple by using privileged information in his suits against the Temple.[57]Charles R. Garry represented the Temple in the suit.[57] The suit alleged that Stoen was attempting to "harass and oppress" his former client and sought to enjoin Stoen from soliciting former members as clients in suits against the Temple.[57]

By October 1978, all of the defectors had allied with Stoen and the Concerned Relatives.[58] On October 3, Stoen told the State department that he would retrieve John from Jonestown by force if necessary.[59] Three days later he sent a telegram reiterating the threat and warning of the danger of mass suicide at Jonestown.[59]

After pressure grew, the Temple learned that Stoen would accompany a Congressional investigatory trip by Leo Ryan to Guyana.[60] On November 15, 1978, Grace and Tim Stoen both traveled with the Ryan delegation to Georgetown.[61] However, they were not permitted to accompany the delegation on its November 17 trip to the Temple settlement at Jonestown.[62]

While the Stoens remained in Guyana, the Ryan delegation was attacked on November 18 at an airstrip near Jonestown.[63] Congressman Ryan and four others were killed at the airstrip by Temple members wielding rifles and shotguns, while several others were injured.[63]

Tim Stoen encountered Jim Jones' son Stephan in his Georgetown hotel, neither knowing that the killings were unfolding two hundred miles away.[64] As they spoke, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown,[65] 276 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a pavilion.[66]

A recording of the final meeting, made by the Temple before the massacre, mentioned Stoen.[67] Jones stated:[67]

“

What we'd like to get are the people that caused this stuff, and some -- if some people here are p -- are prepared and know how to do that, to go in town and get Timothy Stoen, but there's no plane. There's no plane. You can't catch a plane in time. He's responsible for it. He brought these people to us. He and Deanna Mertle (referring to Jeannie Mills). The people in San Francisco will not -- not be idle over this. They'll not take our death in vain, you know. . . .

It's suicide. Plenty have done it. Stoen has done it. But somebody ought to live. Somebody -- Can they talk to -- and I've talked to San Francisco -- see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy -- with this infamy. He has done the thing he wanted to do. Have us destroyed. . . .

Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate. He has nobody else to hate. Then he'll destroy himself.

”

—Jim Jones on the final "death tape"

Jones also discussed whether the Temple should include Stoen among the names of those committing "revolutionary suicide",[67] and whether to include children in the plan:[67]

“

do you think I'd put John's life above others? If I put John's life above others, I wouldn't be standing with Ujara [a man who attempted to stab Congressman Ryan]. I'd send John out -- out, and he could go out on the driveway tonight. . . . I know, but he's no -- he's no different to me than any of these children here. He's just one of my children. I don't prefer one above another. I don't prefer him above Ujara. I can't do that. I can't separate myself from your actions or his actions.

”

—Jim Jones on the final "death tape"

Six-year-old John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin.[68] The incident at Jonestown was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the incidents of September 11, 2001.[69]

From 1980 to 1984, Stoen was Corporate Counsel for Pacific Energy & Minerals, Ltd.[4] For some time thereafter, Stoen worked at a private practice.[4] In 1998, Stoen ran for the California State Senate and lost in the Democratic Party primary, receiving 34.5% of the party vote.[70] On his political philosophy page, Stoen stated:[71]

“

Life-experience education as the adversary of Jim Jones and the person Jones blamed for his downfall ("Tim Stoen is responsible for this....We win when we go down"), learning at the core of my being the truth of Lord Acton's dictum that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." One who has experienced the abuse of power has learned a profound lesson in wisdom and can more likely be trusted with power.

”

Later, Stoen returned to work for the district attorney's offices in Humboldt and Mendocino counties.[7] Former Mendocino County District Attorney Norm Vroman, who hired Stoen back to the Ukiah office in 2000, stated "frankly, I've never seen him lose a case."[7]